Twist adds layers to Strauss' work

Capriccio ****

Festival Theatre

Daring to be different, this world premier of a new production from the Cologne Opera of Richard Strauss's Capriccio is a fitting climax to this year's International Festival.

The big theme of the Festival has been the combination of words with music, and an argument over which is better lies at the heart of Capriccio.

Yet this is a production that goes beyond such a basic dilemma.

Director Christian von Götz keeps Strauss's plot and structure, but nests it inside a beginning and ending that speak of the dark times in which the opera was written, under the Third Reich in 1942.

The opera concerns the birthday of a widowed Countess. Her two suitors, the composer Flamand and the poet Olivier, vie for her affection. In their declaration of their feelings for her and the arguments between them, the two characters become inextricably bound up in the arts which each represents.

Olivier writes her a sonnet which the Countess's brother declaims - badly. Olivier does a little better himself before Flamand sets the words to music. His interpretation is topped by the Countess herself after everyone else has gone. And she finally leaves for supper humming the tune.

Gabriele Fontana is excellent as the Countess. A little under-enthralling in the first act, maybe, but when she eventually sings the set-piece sonnet she holds the stage with such feeling that it is as if there is nothing else in the world but her on stage.

The feeling of a rich chateau near Paris in 1775 is clearly conjured up in the set, the costumes and the mannerisms of the actors. The decadence of the time and place then allows the various characters to create a fantasy world of absurd but entertaining frivolity.

So far, so conventional. Yet it is the way in which this production is reached that is the eye-opener.

Using a backdrop of a huge eye, reflecting German soldiers marching down the Champs-Elysées, von Götz sets the production in the early 1940s. Before a note is sung the Countess and Count appear in 1940s outfits, and a whole air of menace is created with he secret police coming to take them away.

Within this structure, and it runs right through the production as the 1775 opera appears to be actually staged by the Countess and her friends, a new debate begins to emerge. It is not over whether words or music take prime importance, but whether the staging is more important than either.

It is there in the libretto, in fact, in a big aria from La Roche, a director who is part of the house party. In the role, Michael Eder makes it a show-stopping moment.

But all the way through the production it is as if there are two operas being performed on stage. The one portrayed in the words and music. And the quite a different one that you see unfolding before you.

It is very clever stuff, not perfect yet, but certainly a production to set you thinking as the Countess leaves, not to supper, but in silence and under arrest.

• Run ends Saturday